


An Occurrence in January

by HeavenSmile07



Category: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 01:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15876039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeavenSmile07/pseuds/HeavenSmile07
Summary: One cold morning, a middle aged man sets out on an expedition for a treasure that will finally retire him from his profession.





	1. Chapter 1

I

Yuri fumbled around in his pocket. “Wait,” his words bounced off the walls and out into the open field “this ought to be enough.” Placing an assortment of coins on the counter his eyes drifted up at the man behind the glass, and he waited. The man’s fingers reached out, cupping a wall around the pieces of metal and pushed them off the wood and into a waiting hand. They made a distinct clinking noise as they landed in his palm. The man picked and turned over each one, muttering beneath his breath as he counted in his head. When he finished, he made a light rap on the bottom of the till and it cracked open; it wasn’t broken, nor did it require any sort of maintenance. It was just the man’s way to finish a transaction. It was a small show, if only for himself, and every stalker knew he got a kick out of it.

His eyes lightened as he watched the man behind the glass rise from his chair, and rummage the shelves behind him. He had a lot of stock, everything a person exploring the Zone could hope to need. There was ammo, and heaps of it, for just about every kind of sidearm or rifle. Buckshot, for the more aggressive stalker, should he need it. Medicinal supplies, cans of food, small measures that tethered a stalker to his existence in this dimension – if he ever went without, the Zone was that much closer to claiming one’s life, and death was almost shamelessly cheap here. It was important, vital to maintain the necessities needed to eek out one’s livelihood in scavenging the Zone for precious artifacts – wondrous, strange objects that were once mundane now made mythical, transformed and elevated to religious like proportions. A stalker that could get his hands on one was a fortunate, if unlucky man. Often, the brightest things in life tend to burn out the fastest and that was true of anyone that held on to such a relic for too long. If there’s one thing that everybody knew it was that in the Zone you were never truly safe, and if not for divine retribution one would be struck down by an almost pettier fate: human greed.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and breathed into his palms, hoping to warm his cold fingers as the proprietor handed over the goods. Unzipping his bag, Yuri tossed the goods inside and left the man with a slight wave as he exited the compound and into the bitter air of a January morning. It was breezy this morning, and he instinctively clasped his jacket about him. He hadn’t eaten, and his stomach was making sure he knew of it. The last thing he needed was for some mutant or bandit to hear the guttural noises croaking inside him, and potentially prematurely ending his life. He reached back inside, grabbed the first thing his fingers grazed, some smoked sausage, and lifted it to his mouth to take a bite. It was coarse, chewy, he wasn’t sure if it was beef or chicken. He wasn’t sure what animal it was, all he knew was that it sated his appetite and quieted his subconscious so that he could focus on much more important matters. Today, he would be hunting near the quarry several miles out from his current location.

Yuri was a middle-aged man, roughly forty to forty five. He was born in Belarus, sometime before the Chernobyl incident had occurred, and his parents fled to the countryside when news of the meltdown had reached public ears. At the time, Pripyat was the cutting edge of the Soviet Union and everyone knew it. Papers from all around the blocks had made it clear the city was the pride and joy of the USSR, and it was a beacon against western ideologies. And at the center of it all was the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. And it would remain this way, until hubris happened and what followed was the wings of the Soviet Union melting as the proverbial Icarus flew too close to the sun. The city of Pripyat was abandoned, the pride of the USSR had been smashed, and what was once the centerpiece of innovation and progress was being slowly reeled back towards zero as buildings eroded, machinery rusted, and the memories of the people that lived there being hushed and quietly buried by the encroachment of time. Pripyat had become a mausoleum.

But something miraculous transpired, something the Soviet government wanted kept quiet and contained, something unheard of was happening in the exclusion zone. Nobody knew exactly, but something was changing and it was altering the fabric of reality around it. The Chernobyl power plant’s destruction had brought forth change, wondrous change, and the city that was a tomb now housed such beauty and terror that it called out to people from all over the Eastern block, those brave or foolish enough, to take a step inside and see what awaited them beyond the veil of understanding. Those that survived long enough eventually adopted a nickname for this new world: The Zone.

Yuri wasn’t stupid, however. He had heard stories of people going missing that had entered the forbidden territory, tales of people being torn apart by the things seen and witnessed. Good men, solid men, crumbled to dirt in the wake of hunting after fables and all the romantics in the world couldn’t convince him that a decent person turning to ash or worse was at all something allegorical to triumphant or spiritual. Some stalkers had taken to priesthood in the light of this new world, but Yuri wouldn’t be bothered by such banalities. All that mattered was the money he could make scavenging for supplies and anything of value that came his way.

His trek would take him across the railroads, and he kept a hand close to his side near his pistol should something, anything attempt to halt him in his journey. Out here, it was important to keep quiet, keep low, and stay as silent as possible. Every once in a while, he would hear the crackling of gunshots ring out as they echoed across the landscape and eventually silence would take control again. It was like this in the Zone, when death happened everybody would know it. The Zone would make sure they did. Howls and screams, curses and occasional calls for help were commonplace and a friend was about as trustworthy as the amount of bolts he carried on his person. This wasn’t to say trade in the wild never occurred, but you were likelier to find what you needed off the remains of some poor bastard that had met some grizzly fate minutes, hours, weeks ago.

Yuri had reached the edge of the quarry when something incredibly chilling trickled down his spine – he had heard the slight rustling of grass in the distance every time he moved from a spot, but never registered it could mean anything other than the wind, except for that the rustling also stopped when he did. He felt his knees buckle a bit as the insides of his stomach churned in a most uncomfortable way. He was being hunted. By what, he wasn’t sure but he knew it wasn’t human. A human would have shot him by now and raided his corpse, a human would have stripped him of his possessions long before he made it this far. The desires of a human were primitive, if understandable. Whatever this was, it wasn’t human and it terrified Yuri. Cold sweat dripped off his nose and onto the ground beneath him.

Bending down, Yuri dropped his satchel to his side like he had done all morning when taking a break from his trek. His hands shaking, he slowly unlaced his boots and placed them inside his satchel when his hands grazed some of the sausage he still had from this morning. A thought ran through his mind, it was possible this thing only wanted what he had in his pack, and so he ripped pieces of the meat and threw it in different directions, in the hopes that it wouldn’t follow where he was going. He laid his body against the ground, in a supine position so that the creature couldn’t tell where he was and he waited. The ground beneath him felt as if it would give way at any moment, and that he’d eventually go tumbling down the precipice, and for all his attempts at mitigating the creature’s advances the entirety of the Zone would make sure everyone and everything heard Yuri’s fall and he’d be the next victim put on display and made an example of.

But it never came. The inevitable fall Yuri was sure he’d take was stayed, and the rustling he had heard earlier was now moving away from him, towards the places he had thrown the ripped meat. For but a moment, Yuri exhaled. He was safe, for now. Picking himself back up, he took to crouching as he slowly made his way down the hillside and gritted his teeth when his feet would cross rock and stone. He still had his boots in his pack, but he didn’t dare put them back on for he knew the creature was still out there and a moment’s waste could mean a quick end. His gesture wasn’t entirely a farce, however, he knew he’d be more silent with bare skin.

The ground beneath his feet finally gave to something softer, something darker as it straightened out beneath him when he reached the bottom. His toes sank into the ground as it left indentations in the mud, and he arched forward as he took to a more natural position as he headed towards the giant excavator a few yards off in front of him. He had been here before, and all the treasures the excavator housed had been plundered long before he ever arrived but his reasoning was much more practical this time. Now, he’d reach a higher spot to scout the area that made up the rest of the sickly pit that had been irradiated for years and years. If there was anything of value, he’d find it from up there.

His fingers grasping onto the cold metal, he hoisted himself up and ascended the creaking stairs making sure to watch his footing. When he felt it sufficient, he hunkered down and pulled his binoculars from inside his pack as he gazed out towards the sludge that had taken on an almost viridian hue. From there, he’d wait until he surveyed just enough of the area. He was aware that artifacts would sometimes materialize among the bubbling of the poisonous gas, and if his primary prize couldn’t be ascertained he also knew that many other stalkers had met untimely fates in the tall grass below as they too sought after elusive baubles that went for fortunes among some of the more fanatical groups in the Zone.

Some time passed until he noticed something crackling in the light of the swamp, and he felt his heart jump in his throat. An artifact...? he pondered. He kept a steady gaze as he noticed the grass bending beneath the weight of something moving about in the underbrush near the center of the quarry and stopped. This was it, he knew it. Throwing his satchel over his shoulder he descended the structure and landed with a soft thud as he pulled his detector from one pocket and grabbed for several bolts from another. It wasn’t the latest in the Zone, but the detector he had could still make out spots of highly concentrated radiation and in conjunction with the lug nuts he’d be able to slip through the worst areas to reach his reward.

What was strange about this particular anomaly is that the artifact seemed to stay in one place as he threw bolt after bolt in between pockets of radiation. Most artifacts were small, and could be tossed to and fro at a moments notice inside such dangerous anomalies but this one seemed to almost have some sort of weight to it. Yuri grinned, this could be a potentially new and unknown artifact that could easily be worth its weight in gold and he’d finally be able to retire from his profession as a stalker and go back home. The detector remained silent as he neared the center, and he briefly pondered if perhaps he should have forked over the money for one of the newer models this morning as his hand released yet another bolt and it made a definitive tapping noise as it bounced out of thin air and into the mud. Yuri froze, the grass moved, and the last thing he recalled before the thunderous roar was his pistol at his side.

He scrambled, the thing flashed like a bright light and Yuri got a quick glimpse at it. A hulking beast, eye sockets white and glossed over with a mouth that split open and arched as fleshy tendrils lashed out and all directions as its claws extended towards him and its feet trampled the ground in a rush towards him. A small yelp released from Yuri’s mouth as his fingers quickly reached to his side in the hopes he’d find the comforting grip of his pistol but he was too late. The sharp tendons of the creature’s grips slashed at his hip as he yelled and stumbled back and through a pocket of radiation. Yuri’s eyes lit up like fire, and for a moment he was seeing in different colors as the world around him churned in a sickly hue. He fell over just as the beast jumped at his throat and the ground beneath him began to give way and he, and the beast, went tumbling beneath the repository of the quarry deep into the black pit below. His mouth opened wide and his screams echoed. It reverberated across the quarry and into the overcast sky. And then the Zone went silent.


	2. Chapter 2

II

Colors swirled in Yuri’s head, vibrantly and all at once fast until vague distortions began taking shape. The nauseating hue slowed as they came into focus and shifted into what resembled a small field. The sky, normally overcast, was now laden with deep pools of blue and he could feel a warm breeze across his skin. Yuri was standing in the doorway of a small cabin, overlooking the field and beyond. Trees, clouds, all these things that were twisted and gnarled in the Zone were now verdant with life and the grass beneath his feet tickled his skin in a most peculiar way.

He blinked, unsure of what was happening. Was he still in the Zone? He wasn’t sure. He held his hands up to his face and felt as his fingers touched his skin before lowering them back down. He felt it, and he could feel the breeze, and he could feel the sunshine for the first time in what must have been forever. And the next thing Yuri noticed was the smell of cherries wafting from nearby. His heart instantly thumped in his chest, and he felt confusion, and concern, and joy as he swallowed a small cry and felt something new trickle down his face. They were his tears. Yuri hadn’t cried since his grandmother’s passing, life in the Zone had hardened him considerably. His focus centered once more on the small field - the backyard, his backyard, and a figure had taken shape. There, in her yellow blouse, white skirt, and fuzzy gray hair was his grandmother. 

He couldn’t believe what was happening, all he knew was his feet was pulling him towards her. She had a basket draped on an arm as one reached up to pick the reddest cherries he’d ever seen, and he knew his place was there. When he reached her the woman seemed to tower over him, but he wasn’t afraid. She noticed, and turned to him as her face eased into a pleasant smile, the kind he had always known her for. She reached a hand out to him, and spoke.

“Yuri”

Her voice instantly triggered sobs from his mouth, but his cries were unlike any he heard in a long time. They were higher pitched, and as he reached up to wipe the tears from his face he felt an unfamiliar smoothness to his fingers. They felt new, soft, and the skin on his tips depressed easily when he pushed on them. He looked down and he noticed he was no longer wearing the fatigues he was so accustomed to, but a white shirt and shorts. Yuri was unsure of what to make of all this, until his grandmother cupped his hands in hers and in that moment he no longer cared about the absurdity of the situation. He was with his grandmother again, and she leaned down as he threw his arms around her and they embraced tightly. Once more he heard sobs ringing out from his mouth, drool dripping onto his grandmother’s shoulder as he openly wept. His grandmother pulled back and held a thumb and index finger out to his face as she wiped away his tears.

“Would you like to pick cherries with me?” her voice engulfed him in a tender warmth. He eagerly nodded, and she smiled sweetly at him again. She scooped him up in her arm, took his hand and held it out towards the branches as his little fingers grasped the brightest, reddest one he’d ever seen and pulled.

==

Something wet and cold was prickling his face when Yuri opened his eyes and immediately regretted moving. It was raining, but more importantly he was back among the living – and inheriting all of the ramifications that came with it. He felt an indescribable sensation radiating from his leg, and found that he could just barely move it. Blood had pooled underneath and after finding the strength to lift up the appendage, it was only then he felt even more pain stemming from his side.  
He traced his fingers across his hip when he made contact with the open wound and involuntarily yelped, red dripping off of them and onto his muddied clothes. It was then he remembered. He had been ambushed by some thing and in his last moments of consciousness he could only recall gravity pulling him down into the darkness. He looked around, the earth he fell through wasn’t terribly deep but there was just enough light from the hole above to make out only soft impressions of where he was. He was in cavern, of that he was sure, but the beast and his pack were nowhere to be found. 

He grabbed for his side when he discovered his pistol was missing – in the ensuing encounter it must have dislodged from its holster as he was positioning himself to fend off the creature, and landed somewhere else during the fall. He cursed beneath his breath. Wincing, he picked himself up and then stumbled backwards. He felt feverish, hot and cold all at once and he nearly vomited from the amount of pain he was currently experiencing. Yuri took a moment to steady himself, breathe, regain his composure to the best of his ability, or what ability he had at the moment, to try to find medical attention.

His steps were haggard, and his feet waterlogged. They sloshed through the water that was pooling beneath as he felt around the cave wall. His eyes had adjusted to make out just enough of the curves and bends that were draped in the deep black. He could hear his breathing, rough and exasperated as it echoed and bounced all around him and into tunnels far off. It was several minutes before he began making out more distinct markings on the walls as he breathed a sigh of relief; a dim light was shining down the corridor a ways out and as he moved towards it the wind began picking up, whipping against bare skin, his wounds as his teeth gritted in response.

Finally, he had removed himself from the cavern and back into the open when he looked around and his face furrowed in concern. He wasn’t familiar with this part of the Zone, he must have fallen farther than he anticipated and it brought him somewhere completely alien to him. The machinery, the buildings, the work of man – none of it was to be found. All that surrounded him were trees looming in the distance. But he would find human life, he would have to. If he had to traverse the woods to find somebody, anybody, he would.

Leaves beneath his feet crinkled and twisted, twigs and branches snapping in sharp sounds as he trod through what felt like hours of wooded territory. Pain was coming over him in waves as his wounds continued to bleed and his feet had taken to a sickly dark discoloration, and about the only thing that matched the intensity of it all was his increasing frustrations at what felt like an endless forest.

It was almost nightfall when he found himself resting on a rock in a small clearing, eyes half-lid as he started ruminating in his head. He looked down at his hands and he found he could barely make them out. His breaths had slowed and became hushed, and the anger and frustration he had earlier had waned to something much more bitter. Daylight fading, and the bitter cold of the night setting in, here, in some unknown part of the Zone he quietly resolved himself to what was happening. He was dying. The stories he had heard, the tales he had dismissed, they were now claiming him. He would perish in the middle of this forest, whose sound was all but diminished. He lowered his head.

The smell of his blood was rank now, and it masked his senses until the slight pull of something sweet tugged at him and his eyes fluttered. He inhaled deeply and beneath the foul odor of his bodily fluids he could make out a certain smell, one he hadn’t smelled in years. Yuri felt something trickle down his face, something he hadn’t felt in years. His tears, wet and warm, mingled with the blood as they hugged his cheek and dripped down below. With every ounce of his strength, he picked himself up and looked around and that’s when he saw it. There, in the distance through the trees was a cabin and Yuri found his feet was pulling him towards it. There were some thoughts in his head about what was happening, why it was happening, but in this moment it didn’t matter. There was something oddly comforting about the cabin, something he couldn’t put his finger on but right now it didn’t matter. He wasn’t sure if he was even dead or not, but it didn’t matter. Soft light was emanating from the windows as he found his strength renewed lifting his feet as they connected with the steps and he reached for the door. His pain, his worry, it melted away as his hand cupped the warm handle and he walked inside.

==

It was several days later when a group of stalkers that had been exploring the perimeter of the Zone came across the body of a middle aged man, surrounded by what appeared to be cherry plants growing among his remains. He had no identification on him. Preliminary testing of the strange plants showed that they were harmless, if edible but had an unnatural bitterness to them. Some stalkers found that ingesting the cherries elicited fond feelings of some event they couldn’t quite recall.


End file.
